Data visualization is all about communication.

Just like in graphics design, less is more. To get a good graphics remove all excess ink.

• What do I want to say?
• What do I need to say?
• What part of my information is redundant?
• What is the standard way of displaying the information in my field?

Resist the temptation of showing every bit of data. If necessary, put it in the supplementary materials.

p <- mtcars %>% group_by(cyl) %>% 
      summarise(mean_mpg=mean(mpg)) %>%
      mutate(cyl=factor(cyl)) %>% 
      ggplot(aes(x=cyl, y=mean_mpg, fill=cyl))
p + geom_bar(stat="identity", mapping=aes(fill=cyl)) + 
  theme(axis.line=element_line(size=1, arrow=arrow(length=unit(0.1, "inches"))))

“Clutter and confusion are failures of design, not attributes of information.” (Tufte)

boxplot(hwy ~ class, data=mpg)

mpg %>% ggplot(aes(x=class, y=hwy)) + geom_boxplot()

mpg %>% ggplot(aes(x=class, y=hwy)) + geom_boxplot() +
    geom_dotplot(binaxis="y", stackdir="center", fill="grey", dotsize=.3)

mpg %>% ggplot(aes(x=class, y=hwy)) + geom_boxplot() +
    geom_dotplot(binaxis="y", stackdir="center", fill="grey", dotsize=.3)

p <- list()
p$p1 <- ggplot(mtcars, aes(x=disp, y=hp, color=factor(cyl))) + geom_point() 
p$p2 <- ggplot(mtcars, aes(x=disp, y=hp, color=factor(cyl))) + geom_point() + 
  theme_par()
p$p3 <- ggplot(mtcars, aes(x=disp, y=hp, color=factor(cyl))) + geom_point() + 
  theme_cowplot()
p$p4 <- ggplot(mtcars, aes(x=disp, y=hp, color=factor(cyl))) + geom_point() + 
  theme_tufte()

p <- map(p, ~ . + theme(plot.margin=margin(20, 0, 0, 0)))
plot_grid(plotlist=p, labels=c("Default", "Par", "Cowplot", "Tufte"))

“Above all else show the data.” (Tufte)

• Bar charts have their purpose: showing proportions or absolute quantities (1 value per bar)
• Y axis must always start at 0, because bar charts communicate with the bar surface area
• Bar charts are often misused to show sample means and sample spread; they should be replaced by box plots, violin plots or dot plots.

(demo)

Editorial. “Kick the bar chart habit.” Nature Methods 11 (2014): 113.

• Pie charts are bad at communicating information, just don’t use them
• Don’t even mention 3D pie charts
• There are tons of alternatives to pie charts

It is not important which system you use. It is important that you first come up with the idea how you want the data to be plotted, and that you can plot it – with whatever means you can. (Where should you look for a lost watch?)

• graphic devices (PDF, SVG, PNG, …)
• basic R: plotting primitives, par() system
• rgl (3D graphics): 3D plotting primitives
• plotrix: a collection of plotting functions
• grid: an alternative system of plotting primitives
• lattice: based on grid, sophisticated plotting
• ggplot2: based on grid, sophisticated plotting

• easy learning curve
• superb for quick and dirty plots
• relatively easy to add arbitrary elements to the plots
• widely spread, always there for you
• many specialized packages doing what otherwise cannot be easily achieved

• messy
• not standardized
• once you put something on the plot, it stays here
• some things are incredibly hard to achieve
• by default ugly as sin

• well thought through and organized
• easy to modify a ready made plot
• dozens of different plot types with a similar interface
• tons of ggplot2 based packages
• widely spread

• steeper learning curve, completely different philosophy
• I for one have always to look up even simplest things
• some things are incredibly hard to achieve
• if it’s not there, you are on your own
• huge data sets problematic (require huge data frames -> use tibble)
• by default ugly as sin

• changing the overall esthetics of the plot easily
• modifying certain parameters (like text)
• making facets

• networks (use igraph or graphviz for that)
• identifying points on a plot, interactive graphics
• 3D graphics
• slooooooow

• mapping between variables and an “esthetics”
  • x, y
  • color, fill
  • symbol
  • ymin/ymax, xmin/xmax (error bars)
• geom (points, segments, bars, whatever)
• guides (axes, legends)
• theme (specific look of things)

data(mpg)
ggplot(mpg, aes(x=hwy, y=cty)) + geom_point()

We will now use world inequality data to create a bar plot.

First, we prepare the data using tidyverse.

wid <- read_excel("../Datasets/WIID_19Dec2018.xlsx")
wid <- wid %>% drop_na(gini_reported, q1:q5, d1:d10)
wid2015 <- wid %>% filter(year==2015 & 
                          region_un == "Europe" & 
                          population > 5e6)
wid2015sel <- wid2015  %>% 
  filter(quality=="High") %>%
  filter(!duplicated(country)) %>% 
  select(country, gini_reported, q1:q5, d1:d10)

## we mess the quantiles on purpose
data <- wid2015sel %>% 
  gather(q1:q5, key="quantile", value="proportion") %>%
  mutate(quantile=factor(quantile, levels=paste0("q", c(2, 1, 5, 4, 3))))

Now we pass the data to ggplot.

p <- data %>%
  ggplot(aes(country, proportion, fill=quantile)) +
  geom_bar(stat="identity") + coord_flip()
p

• coord_flip() so the bar plot is horizontal
• geom_bar() uses the fill esthetics

data <- data %>% mutate(quantile=factor(quantile, levels=paste0("q", 5:1)))
p <- data %>%
  ggplot(aes(country, proportion, fill=quantile)) +
  geom_bar(stat="identity") + coord_flip()
p

data <- wid2015sel %>% 
  mutate(country=reorder(country, desc(gini_reported))) %>%
  gather(q1:q5, key="quantile", value="proportion") %>%
  mutate(quantile=factor(quantile, levels=paste0("q", 5:1)))
p <- data  %>%
  ggplot(aes(country, proportion, fill=quantile)) +
  geom_bar(stat="identity") + coord_flip()
p

p + theme_tufte() + scale_fill_brewer(palette="Blues") +
  ylab("Proportion of wealth") + xlab("Country") +
  guides(fill=guide_legend(reverse=TRUE))

• What is the function of color on the plot?
• Does the color help or distract?
• Do I really need color?
• If you need more than five distinct colors (I don’t mean a gradient), you probably are doing something wrong.

There are many ways to represent colors. In R, we most frequently use the RGB scheme in which each color is composed of three values for each of the three colors: red, green and blue.

One way is to choose values between 0 and 1; another, between 0 and 255. The latter can be represented using hexadecimal notation, in which the value goes from 0 to FF (15 * 16 + 15 = 255). This is a very common notation, used also in HTML:

• "#FF0000" or c(255, 0, 0): red channel to the max, blue and green to the minimum. The result is color red.
• "#00FF00": bright green
• "#000000": black
• "#FFFFFF": white

• To get the color from numbers in 0…1 range:

  rgb(0.5, 0.7, 0) # returns “#80B300”

• To get the color from numbers in 0…255 range:

  rgb(255, 128, 0, maxColorValue=255)

Useful way to handle large numbers of data points. #FF000000: fully transparent; #FF0000FF: fully opaque.

x <- rnorm(10000)
y <- x + rnorm(10000)
p1 <- ggplot(NULL, aes(x=x, y=y)) + geom_point() + 
  theme_tufte() + theme(plot.margin=unit(c(2,1,1,1), "cm"))
p2 <- ggplot(NULL, aes(x=x, y=y)) + geom_point(color="#6666661F") + 
  theme_tufte() + theme(plot.margin=unit(c(2,1,1,1),"cm"))
plot_grid(p1, p2, labels=c("Black", "#6666661F"))

Useful way to handle large numbers of data points. #FF000000: fully transparent; #FF0000FF: fully opaque.

There are several other representations of color space, and they do not give exactly the same results. Two common representations are HSV and HSL: Hue, Saturation and Value, and Hue, Saturation and Luminosity.

There are many packages to help you manipulate the colors using hsl and hsv. For example, my package plotwidgets allows you to change it using the HSL model.

library(plotwidgets)
## Now loop over hues
pal <- plotPals("zeileis")
v <- c(10, 9, 19, 9, 15, 5)

a2xy <- function(a, r=1, full=FALSE) {
  t <- pi/2 - 2 * pi * a / 360
  list( x=r * cos(t), y=r * sin(t) )
}

plot.new()
par(usr=c(-1,1,-1,1))
hues <- seq(0, 360, by=30)
pos <- a2xy(hues, r=0.75)
for(i in 1:length(hues)) {
  cols <- modhueCol(pal, by=hues[i])
  wgPlanets(x=pos$x[i], y=pos$y[i], w=0.5, h=0.5, v=v, col=cols)
}

pos <- a2xy(hues[-1], r=0.4)
text(pos$x, pos$y, hues[-1])

There are many packages to help you manipulate the colors using hsl and hsv. For example, my package plotwidgets allows you to change it using the HSL model.

It is not easy to get a nice combination of colors (see default plot in ggplot2 to see how not to do it).

There are numerous palettes in numerous packages. One of the most popular is RColorBrewer. You can use it with both base R and ggplot2.

library(RColorBrewer)
par(mar=c(0,4,0,0))
display.brewer.all()

par(mar=c(0,4,0,0))
display.brewer.all(colorblindFriendly=T)

data("iris")

The use of multiple measurements in taxonomic problems as an example of linear discriminant analysis. Fisher 1936

pal <- brewer.pal(3, "Dark2")
iris$Species <- factor(iris$Species)
cols <- pal[ iris$Species ]
plot(iris$Sepal.Length, iris$Sepal.Width, col=cols, pch=19,
  xlab="Sepal length", ylab="Sepal width", bty="n", cex=1.5)
legend("topright", levels(iris$Species), col=pal, pch=19, bty="n")

You can easily use ggplot with RColorBrewer palettes:

ggplot(iris, aes(x=Sepal.Length, y=Sepal.Width, color=Species)) + 
  geom_point(size=4) + 
  scale_color_brewer(palette="Dark2") + 
  theme_tufte() + 
  theme(axis.title.y=element_text(margin=margin(0,10,0,0)), 
        axis.title.x=element_text(margin=margin(10, 0, 0, 0)))

For base R, use the following code:

library(scales)
pal <- viridis_pal()(n=6)
show_col(pal)

Implemented in ggplot functions:

• scale_(color|fill)_viridis_(c|d)
• c for continuous, d for discrete

e.g. 

ggplot(iris, aes(x=Sepal.Length, y=Sepal.Width, color=Species)) + 
  geom_point(size=4) + scale_color_brewer(palette="Set2") + theme_tufte() + 
  theme(axis.title.y=element_text(margin=margin(0,10,0,0)), 
        axis.title.x=element_text(margin=margin(10, 0, 0, 0)))

• my package plotwidgets implements a couple of other palettes
• You can always define your own colors!
• Use a color picker to “steal” palettes that you think are nice
• You can use this tool or this one to design colorblind friendly palettes

par(mar=c(0,4,0,0))
library(plotwidgets)
showPals()

pal <- plotPals("darkhaze")
pal
ggplot(iris, aes(x=Sepal.Length, y=Sepal.Width, color=Species)) + 
  geom_point(size=4) + scale_color_manual(values=pal) + theme_tufte() + 
  theme(axis.title.y=element_text(margin=margin(0,10,0,0)), 
        axis.title.x=element_text(margin=margin(10, 0, 0, 0)))

In base R, we can use colorRampPalette()

pal_func <- colorRampPalette(c("cyan", "black", "purple"))
pal <- pal_func(15)
pal

##  [1] "#00FFFF" "#00DADA" "#00B6B6" "#009191" "#006D6D" "#004848" "#002424" "#000000" "#160422" "#2D0944" "#440D66" "#5B1289" "#7216AB" "#891BCD" "#A020F0"

In ggplot, there is a number of continuous scales available.

• scale_(color|fill)_viridis_c (viridis color scale)
• scale_(color|fill)_gradient (two colors)
• scale_(color|fill)_gradient2 (three colors)

The problem is with exactly defining the break points (which value corresponds to which color?)

• classes of objects
• the same operator or function (“method”) has different effects on different objects
• for example, there are different print and summary functions called depending on the type of the object to print or summarize
• In the OO context, a function is called a “method”
• Common methods such as print, summary are called “generics”

R implements two frameworks for OO programming:

• S3: easy to use, easy to understand, simple, informal
• S4: complex, formalized, safer

Both are used in parallel.

class(starwars)
print(starwars)
print.data.frame(starwars)
tibble:::print.tbl(starwars)

Although a tibble is also a data frame, the first class (tbl) takes precedence and it is displayed with the function from the tibble package.

• When R sees that starwars is an object of class tbl, and we call a function print on that object, it first looks for a function called print.tbl.
• Although we cannot see print.tbl, because it is not attached to our namespace, it has been loaded with the tibble package and R can see it.
• If such a function is found, it will be used.
• Otherwise, another class will be attempted
• If everything else fails, the default print method will be used

v1 <- "blabla"
## add a class, not replace
class(v1) <- c("bulba", class(v1))
print.bulba <- function(x, ...) {
  cat(paste0("An object of class bulba:\n", x, "\n"))
}
v1

## An object of class bulba:
## blabla

nonsense <- function(x, ...) { UseMethod("nonsense", x) }
nonsense.default <- function(x, ...) {
  cat("Oh well, not a bulba then.\n")
}
nonsense.bulba <- function(x, ...) {
  cat(paste("This", x, "is nonsense!\n"))
}
nonsense(v1)

## This blabla is nonsense!

nonsense(pi)

## Oh well, not a bulba then.

Remember that everything is a function?

We can define generic operators to work on our class!

v1 <- "a"
class(v1) <- c("bulba", class(v1))
v2 <- "b"
class(v2) <- c("bulba", class(v2))

`+.bulba` <- function(a, b) {
  ret <- paste0(a, b)
  class(ret) <- "bulba"
  return(ret)
}

v1 + v2

## An object of class bulba:
## ab

g1 <- ggplot(data=mtcars, aes(x=disp, y=hp, color=mpg)) +
  geom_point(size=5) + scale_color_viridis_c()
class(g1)

## [1] "gg"     "ggplot"

methods(class="gg")

## [1] +
## see '?methods' for accessing help and source code

methods(class="ggplot")

## [1] as_grob      ggplot_build plot         print        summary     
## see '?methods' for accessing help and source code

methods(print) %>% { .[grep("ggplot", .)] }

## [1] "print.ggplot"       "print.ggplot2_bins"

• The “R Graphics Cookbook”
• The STHDA (sthda.com) website
• Stackoverflow
• R-graph-gallery
• Data-to-viz

qplot is an interface to ggplot which uses a syntax similar to the basic plot function.

The theme() and theme_*() functions return an object of the class theme which can be added to a ggplot in order to change appearance of several elements. The list of the elements you can theme can be found in the theme() help page. You can add themes. The result is again a theme object that you can reuse and even set as default. This makes it easy to create your own themes.

In base R:

plot(...., log="xy") # to scale both axes

In ggplot2:

ggplot(data, aes(...)) + ... + scale_x_log10

To avoid labels which are overlaping, we can use the ggrepel package.

(Demo)

There are two important functions in cowplot: predefined theme_cowplot(), which is quite nice, and plot_grid(), which rocks. plot_grid allows you to create separate plots and combine them in a number of ways. You can even draw a plot in basic R, record it and include it in your plot_grid call!

Note: Cowplot defines its own theme, theme_cowplot() and automatically sets it when loaded (I think that is no longer the case in the newest versions). It stays there even if you unload the package, however you can always use theme_set() to set the default theme to something else.

You can get a lattice-like representation using facet_grid() function. For example:

ggplot(mpg, aes(cty, hwy)) + geom_point() + facet_grid(rows=mpg$cyl)

data(mpg)
ggplot(mpg, aes(cty, fill=factor(cyl))) +
    geom_density(alpha=0.8) +
    labs(title="Density plot",
         subtitle="City Mileage Grouped by Number of cylinders",
         caption="Source: mpg",
         x="City Mileage",
         fill="# Cylinders")

library(ggcorrplot)

# Correlation matrix
data(mtcars)
corr <- round(cor(mtcars), 1)

# Plot
ggcorrplot(corr, hc.order = TRUE, 
           type = "lower", 
           lab = TRUE, 
           lab_size = 3, 
           method="circle", 
           colors = c("tomato2", "white", "springgreen3"), 
           title="Correlogram of mtcars", 
           ggtheme=theme_bw)

#  ```{r, animation.hook="gifski"}
#  for (i in 1:2) {
#    pie(c(i %% 2, 6), col = c('red', 'yellow'), labels = NA)
#  }
#  ```

• What is the message of the figure?
• What data should be shown on a plot?
• What relationships do you want to illustrate?
• If it is tricky – I start with a pencil and a clean piece of paper!

“The world cannot be understood without numbers. But the world cannot be understood with numbers alone.”

― Hans Rosling, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

library(ggplot2)
theme_set(theme_bw())
library(gapminder)
knitr::kable(head(gapminder))

gapminder %>% ggplot(aes(x=gdpPercap, y=lifeExp, color=year)) + geom_point()

gapminder %>% ggplot(aes(x=gdpPercap, y=lifeExp, color=year)) + geom_point() +
  scale_x_log10()

gapminder %>% ggplot(aes(x=gdpPercap, y=lifeExp, color=year)) + geom_point() +
  scale_x_log10() + scale_color_viridis_c()

gapminder %>% filter(year==2007) %>%
  ggplot(aes(x=gdpPercap, y=lifeExp, color="continent")) + geom_point() +
  scale_x_log10() + scale_color_brewer(palette="Dark2")

gapminder %>% filter(year==2007) %>%
  ggplot(aes(x=gdpPercap, y=lifeExp, size=pop, color="continent")) + geom_point() +
  scale_x_log10() + scale_color_brewer(palette="Dark2")

gapminder %>% filter(year==2007) %>%
  ggplot(aes(x=gdpPercap, y=lifeExp, size=pop, color=country)) + 
  geom_point(alpha=.7, show.legend=FALSE) +
  scale_color_manual(values=country_colors) +
  scale_x_log10()

g1952 <- gapminder %>% filter(year == 1952) %>%
  ggplot(aes(x=gdpPercap, y=lifeExp, color=continent)) + geom_point() +
  scale_color_brewer(palette="Dark2") +
  xlim(range(gapminder$gdpPercap)) + 
  ylim(range(gapminder$lifeExp)) + scale_x_log10()

g2007 <- gapminder %>% filter(year == 2007) %>%
  ggplot(aes(x=gdpPercap, y=lifeExp, color=continent)) + geom_point() +
  scale_color_brewer(palette="Dark2") +
  xlim(range(gapminder$gdpPercap)) + 
  ylim(range(gapminder$lifeExp)) + scale_x_log10()

plot_grid(g1952, g2007)

Much easier!

gapminder %>% filter(year %in% c(1952, 2007)) %>%
  ggplot(aes(x=gdpPercap, y=lifeExp, color=continent)) +
  scale_color_brewer(palette="Dark2") +
  geom_point() + facet_grid(. ~ year) + scale_x_log10()

gapminder %>% filter(year %in% c(1952, 2007)) %>%
  ggplot(aes(x=gdpPercap, y=lifeExp, size=pop, color=continent)) +
  scale_color_brewer(palette="Dark2") +
  geom_point() + facet_grid(. ~ year) + scale_x_log10()

tmp <- gapminder %>% filter(year %in% c(1952, 2007)) %>% 
  group_by(continent, year) %>% 
  summarise(mean=mean(gdpPercap), median=median(gdpPercap))
tmp %>% ggplot(aes(x=year, y=mean, color=continent)) + 
  geom_point() + geom_line() + 
  scale_y_log10() + 
  geom_label(aes(label=continent), hjust="outward", show.legend=F) + xlim(1945, 2020)

gapminder %>% filter(year %in% c(1952, 2007) & continent=="Europe") %>% 
  arrange(gdpPercap, year) %>% 
  mutate(country=factor(country, levels=unique(country))) %>%
  ggplot(aes(x=gdpPercap, y=country, color=year)) + 
  geom_point() + geom_line()

library(gganimate)
g <- gapminder %>% ggplot(aes(x=gdpPercap, y=lifeExp, size=pop, color=continent)) + 
  geom_point(alpha=.8) + 
  scale_color_brewer(palette="Dark2") +
  scale_x_log10() + 
  scale_size(range = c(2, 12)) +
  transition_time(year) + 
  labs(title = 'Year: {frame_time}', x = 'GDP per capita', y = 'life expectancy') +
  ease_aes("linear")

animate(g, duration = 15, fps = 20, width = 800, height = 500, renderer = av_renderer())
anim_save("gapminder.mp4")

Warning: gganimate has huge installation requirements, because you need a renderer library. Depending on your system, this might take a lot of disk space / a lot of headache. For example, using the gifski package requires you to install the rust environment. Also, including in rmarkdown might be problematic.